This is a guest post from Lisa Kramer Taruschio, a writer, professional translator and author of the historical thriller and passionate love story ‘Verdi’s Dream‘
Many people, writers and readers, have asked me what it’s like to be an ex-pat New Yorker and an English language writer of fiction living permanently in a country like Italy where the mother tongue is not your native tongue. This is an interesting question—and by no means a simple one to answer. A little background is necessary, I think.
I am not of Italian origin, so I guess it all began when I married an Italian whom I met in Perugia on my year of study abroad. We lived in NYC, Milan (where our daughter was born), and Perugia, and after we split, I went back to NY with my daughter and raised her there. Professionally, I graduated Columbia with a double major in Italian and English language and literature, and have been a professional translator, writer and editor for many years. So professionally and personally, Italy has been a major part of my life for longer than half my life.
Lest I sound too facile or glib, I must say that I feel a profound joy to have two cultures, two languages, and two citizenships. Because if it is as someone (F. Scott Fitzgerald, I think) once said–that is, that creativity is being able to hold two opposing points of view contemporaneously and see no conflict–then my bi-cultural, bi-lingual life has been lived at the height of creativity.
Living as a foreigner in a foreign land, or living as “half” a foreigner in one’s own land, is both challenging and liberating. There is a constant urgency to re-examine your own identity and values through contrast with the other, and perhaps more for writers than for other folks these confrontations of identities are essential to understanding ourselves and therefore the characters and realities we create. The challenges are illuminating not only professionally and personally. They also force tolerance and compassion for others and other ways of life upon us. And it’s so endlessly fascinating.
Another great writers’ perk to daily life in a ‘foreign’ language is the imposed awareness of language and the effort to retain and refresh one’s own as it is threatened by the ‘other’. This is an easier struggle today than it used to be. There is satellite TV, original language programming, and myriad online resources from YouTube for verbal and slang and colloquial English to just about every worthwhile (and many not too worthwhile) newspapers and magazines all offering podcasts and ways to stay in touch and updated on the latest written and spoken slang, usage and vocabulary. And I’m no linguistic snob; a fiction writer needs all the English he or she can get. On the other hand, I am often surprised, just when I think I’m getting rusty in English, to be in the deep trance of writing and find a word or expression surfacing that I haven’t thought of consciously and haven’t used in years, and with it comes a slice of life. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I felt that the unborn baby and I shared a truly precious secret. All these years later, living in Italy, my language is my privileged secret. Was it Joyce (who was bi-lingual) who said that having a second language is like having another life? It’s so true—although as a professional translator, I must say that at times the duality of culture and language can make one feel a bit schizophrenic. Thank God I never trained for simultaneous translation. That is the height of nerve wracking.
Lastly, I can thank my linguistic isolation for driving me to self-publication. As a former “insider” in Manhattan—editor, translator and fiction writer—I knew first-hand all about what is essentially the rather random and desperate process of trying to sell a novel to an agent or publishing house. But when I still lived in New York, there was no choice. As an ex-pat and a devout, even obsessive reader, however, I naturally fell immediately and deeply in love with the Internet—in fact, I became an Internet junkie. The net became my English language lifeline for all reading material in English, living as I do in a rather remote part of Italy where such material is quite hard to come by. In no time I was used to reading, translating and editing on the screen and grew more and more disgusted with paper. So eBooks and readers seemed to me to be too good to be true. Miraculous, in fact.
When the Kindle app appeared for PC and then the device became available for Europe, I felt as though I’d died and gone to readers’ Heaven. One thing led to another and soon I was reading about the revolution in publishing, the new Far West of books, the imminent demise of the printed book, yada yada yada. I’m a bit skeptical about all that, but personally it took me all of a week to get my novel up on Kindle. I applied myself as I have to every other new skill I have ever learned: read, read, and read some more, to learn from others’ experiences and about the process. I try to keep an open mind. Self-publishing is a steep learning curve, but totally involving and satisfying, and here I speak not just as an ex-pat but as a writer. Because to a great extent, you not only give birth to your “babies” but you watch them grow and develop and you send them out into the world. So it’s a fantastic addition to the creativity you put into the book. It is so like the experience of raising a child—the child develops in spite of you, unpredictably, and you nurture and encourage and love it as it grows. So too with self-publishing. You find your own self-publishing style, just as you’ve waited for your own writing style to reveal itself, just as water finds its level. In the process, you find what works for you, you hone your identity. Just like working with language. It’s a thoroughly satisfying experience.
A note about bi-lingualism. I believe it is an accident of birth. Unless a person is raised speaking more than one language virtually from infancy, there is no such thing, in my opinion, as totally bi-lingual. You can become fluent to the point where you count in a second or third language, dream in it, joke in it, make love in it, whatever—but nothing is ever as thoroughly comfortable as one’s own language. When I land at JFK, I am like a starving person, trying to ‘eat up’ all the language I hear around me, and this lasts most of my visit. I can eavesdrop again and not miss the nuances (love it); talking on the phone is a breeze; making jokes is effortless (I was voted Wittiest in my high school class, so humor is very important to me). Linguistically speaking, in New York this writer is on auto pilot and home again.
Lisa Kramer Taruschio is a writer and professional translator (of the screenplay of Life Is Beautiful for Miramax Books, among other projects) and author of the historical thriller and passionate love story entitled Verdi’s Dream. Set in Milan in 1945, the novel is based on the true story of the secret surrender negotiated by Allen Dulles with SS Gen. Karl Wolff, commander of Nazi troops then occupying the north of Italy.
Links for Verdi’s Dream:
blog at http://www.verdis-dream.com/
on Kindle at Amazon.com at
or
Sample or purchase Verdi’s Dream:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/14252
Image: Flickr CC AgedSenator
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Good stuff. It makes me wish I had the gift of two languages. Ms. Taruschio is surely twice the writer because of it.
Errata Corrige:
We writers are a very picky bunch, and one particularly picky, though brilliant, friend of mine immediately sent me the correct information on the F.Scott Fitzgerald quote. He writes,
“Scott Fitzgerald’s quote, which isn’t about creativity at all, is actually just a little different than the way you phrased it — not just the words, but the meaning. Here it is:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I don’t thinkn it’s a huge leap to go from a first-rate intelligence to creativity, and I think the definition holds up in any case. But accuracy is important, and I thank my friend and apologize to you readers.
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